Plate Tectonics Activity
Go to the following website and watch the video, then answer the questions below:
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.earthsys.tectonic/tectonic-platesearthquakes-and-volcanoes/
1.
2.
3.
4.
What do you notice about the distribution of earthquakes?
What do you notice about the distribution of volcanoes?
Do you see any correlations or patterns?
Can you think of a possible explanation for the patterns you see?
Watch the following video and answer the questions below:
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.earthsys.plateintro/plate-tectonicsan-introduction/
5.
Why are the active areas located where they are?
Watch the following video and then answer the questions below:
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.earthsys.wegener1/plate-tectonics-thescientist-behind-the-theory/
6. Why was Wegener's original idea about continental drift referred to as intuition and not
science?
7. What did Wegener find that he believed was evidence to support his theory?
8. Why didn't others think that his findings constituted evidence?
Working in groups, create a demonstration of how the Atlantic Ocean was formed by sea-floor
spreading
Watch the following video then answer the questions below:
http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/ess05.sci.ess.earthsys.hawaii/plate-tectonics-thehawai699ian-archipelago/
9. What is a hot spot?
10. What does it mean to say that a volcano is dormant?
11. Why do we call Earth an "active" planet? What does this mean?
12. How does the theory of plate tectonics account for earthquakes? Volcanoes?
Mountains?
13. Hawaii's hot spot doesn't display the typical relationship between volcanoes and plate
boundaries, yet it does provide evidence of plate tectonics. How?
14. Why was Wegener's theory of continental drift not accepted when he first proposed it?
What evidence revealed to scientists that continents could be moving apart from each
other?